October 2016

Green Room is unappealing – that’s a compliment. Dishevelled characters, dingy lighting, seedy locations, and punk tunes that sound like they’ve been chewed up and spit out contribute to the stress within this thriller.

The animation featured in Keiichi Hara’s anime Miss Hokusai is terrific. A single cell has the ability to represent the humility and emotion of its characters, along with the imagination the film can achieve. What’s peculiar and disappointing is how these images don’t make a cohesive film when edited together.

Dinesh D’Souza could’ve been a decent documentarian, but that potential has been critically harmed by Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party. Judging by this drastic misfire, I’m thinking that maybe the filmmaker’s next project should be a popcorn political thriller loosely inspired by his own far-right, abrasive political opinions.

The Violin Teacher is a conflicting feature. The music is beautiful and the message is inspiring, but the story’s pace constantly swings back and forth from tight captivation to a sluggish crawl. Sérgio Machado’s film is both the most uplifting film I’ve seen lately, and the most boring.

Readers from last year may have remembered my disdain for the Canadian short films featured at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. This year, out of a wide array of great shorts preceding each feature, the programming won me back.

The Lure (DIR. Agnieszka Smoczynska) Often, a film that has a convoluted plot is trying to hide the fact that it has nothing else going for it. Thus, it is absolutely understandable if someone were to question whether or not to see a Polish horror-musical about a pair of human-eating mermaid sisters who work in a cabaret show, partially based on the original Hans Christian Andersen version of “The Little Mermaid”. Thankfully, Agnieszka Smoczynska’s The Lure is…

The Master Cleanse (DIR. Bobby Miller) The Master Cleanse is such a small film, it’s easy to see why it would slip under someone’s radar. It’s 79 minutes long, contains a seemingly underdeveloped plot, and the film doesn’t seem to provide much in way of cultural presence. This is why Bobby Miller’s movie was such a pleasant surprise – it was so endearing.